New Cancer Therapies to Bring Longer Lives for Patients

Business Insider has reported that ever since 2012, there were more than 60 new cancer treatments that have been approved. However, one of the most interesting is the recently discovered potential of the MR-HIFU technology. This has been shown to extend people’s lives, but indeed the ways in which it achieves that are quite expensive.

High Costs for Medical Treatments

However, the biggest issue with all the treatments is the fact that they are quite expensive. Only in 2016, the global spending for people who need cancer treatments reached $113 billion. This is $6 billion more than the amount that was spent in 2015. What’s more, the Quintiles IMS Institute estimates that by 2021, the number would reach $147 billion.

Murray Aitken is the executive director of the Quintiles IMS Institute. According to him, we are currently living some amazing times. There is truly a boom in what concerns cancer therapies, and it’s going to last a while. 20% of the global spending went on cancer drugs in 2016, while in 2015 there was only 10%.

An Effective Therapy

Medical Express has recently pointed out a particularly effective therapy. This is a combination of ultrasound (HIFU), MRI Imaging and some nanoparticles filled with drugs that are sensitive to temperatures.

This combination is named MR-HIFU, the official name being image-guided administration of medication through the use of temperature-sensitive liposomes. The process relies on the liposomes, which send the medication to the place where the tumor is found. With the help of imaging, doctors keep track of the evolution after the drug is sent. In the future, doctors plan on expanding the technology and improving it so as to reach more and more people. For the moment though, it is quite an expensive procedure, which means not everybody who needs it has access to it.